Despite the PR storm touched off by the ill-considered decision to publish the now-quashed "If I Did It," the fall season's major title, "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon, continues to draw the most attention of any recent book.

In true Pynchon fashion, his latest is a mammoth project -- 1,085 pages -- demanding time and considerable thought to assess it in a cogent, manageable review.

So, we're trying something unusual in covering "Against the Day" while our doughty critic treads his way to the finish line.

First, we're calling on Pynchon readers to offer their brief and, surely, incisive takes on his new novel. The critiques will be featured on the Books area of the Post-Gazette Web site as they come in.

Here are the guidelines: Give us your opinion, in 200 words or less, via e-mail to bhoover@post-gazette.com. And please include your home address and phone. The cutoff date is Dec. 18.

To whet appetites, prime pumps, etc., today we're giving you excerpts from the handful of reviews recently published:

"... probably the most satisfying interpretations of 'Against the Day's' labyrinthine workings, its frequently glorious excesses, will come from its more leisurely critics or from percipient readers willing to devote a couple of months to its slow uncoiling -- I'm willing to grant Pynchon the benefit of the doubt. A book this long that amazes even 50 percent of the time is amazing, and I suspect Pynchon would be the first to suggest we skip the boring parts."

-- Christopher Sorrentino, the Los Angeles Times

"... those who climb aboard Pynchon's airship will have the ride of their lives. History lesson, mystical quest, utopian dream, experimental metafiction, Marxist melodrama, Marxian comedy -- 'Against the Day' is all of these things and more."

-- Steven Moore, the Washington Post

"'Against the Day' may split most naturally into five or six novels, but whether we're watching Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin redefine high-class sex, or Professor Vanderjuice ferret out international profundities, it provides rollicking highbrow edification.

"Still, that leaves one to wonder. In an era when cultural producers complain of the young's MTV brains, short attention spans that demand quick cuts ... will anyone under 25 buy 'Against the Day' except as a snob item for an obsessive aunt?

"Again, we think yes. Pynchon still delivers endlessly droll set pieces that transcend age."

-- Carlin Romano, the Philadelphia Inquirer

"'Against the Day' is Pynchon's longest novel -- a not-unterrifying 300 pages longer than 'Gravity's Rainbow.' It's as much genre-bending as mind-bending, with elements of epic (of course), sci-fi, Western, historical novel, paranoid thriller, comedy, adventure story, young adult novel (that skyship), picaresque novel, political novel and musical comedy.

-- Mark Feeney, the Boston Globe

"'Against the Day' themes relate more closely to 'Gravity's Rainbow' than any of the author's other works, and as the earlier book spoke to its times, the Cold War/Vietnam era, 'Against the Day' provides Pynchon's perspective on the post-9/11 present day. It shows Pynchon at his angriest, placing capitalism at the root not only of war and human misery but in the sullying of scientific and inventive thought.

"Whether or not Pynchon writes future novels, 'Against the Day' can be seen as his 'Brothers Karamazov.' It ties up the loose ends of his career and shows that his past successes were not a fluke. It stands on its own and will enhance the reputation of his previous books."

-- Richard Melo, the Portland Oregonian